Expeditions: Rome

released on Jan 20, 2022

Determine the destiny of Rome as you conquer foreign lands and navigate political intrigue in this turn-based RPG. Directly fight with your party of Praetorians, guide your legion to victory, and choose your own path in a story where every decision matters. How will you shape the future of Rome?


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A dream come true for fans of both CRPGs and Roman history, usurp Julius Caesar's place in history. Very well done with engaging quests, companions, and interesting strategy elements. Lots of roleplay choices and a very fun combat system. Could've used more companion input, dialogue, and quests especially since they become more or less completely silent by the last two acts.

I had high hopes going into the first little bit of this! I thought:

- Ooooh I can make my PC
- OOOOOH I can make a lady PC
- Oooh base building kinda sorta

But then it kinda lost me--I just didn't feel the spark. I wish I had more interesting things to say but I just didn't feel it, y'know? I was looking for X-Com Rome and I got not really that.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for December 2023, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before January 2nd, 2023, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

Exploring an ancient civilization through murder and dialogue trees.

Expeditions: Rome takes the CRPG genre and drops the player into the time period of Ancient Rome. Meeting Julius Caesar in the first scenes, players will take on the role of a man or woman who quickly ascends to a powerful military position and then joins the war efforts while trying to solve their father’s murder. The writing here is good, though it does use a lot of Roman terms so players might need to look those up for full comprehension. However, the story does seem interesting, and the battles are strategic and suitably large.

The Strategy RPG genre though is a mixed bag. While Expeditions: Rome does a great job of making it clear what each attack does, it also sometimes will feel unfair just due to how the genre uses random dice rolls. Also, the story has historical inaccuracies which won’t upset most fans, but feels odd because the game shows a lot of love for the period as well though that’s ignoring the pronunciation choices. And the tactical gameplay won’t appeal to everyone.

Pick this up if you liked the original Fallout games but can do with less humor. It’s a strategy RPG, where you get a large party, cruise around, talk to everyone, and wage war on an epic scale. It might be a bit of a niche, with its heavy story and long gameplay, but it’s also perfect for those who like the genre.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/FzxvEceV60k

Хорошая игра, с интересным выбором и последствиями

Expeditions: Rome is a very welcome surprise. It’s a very narrative-focused XCOM-like, or a CRPG with tactic and objective-based combat. Or it’s a mix of both and very refreshing for that same reason. It takes cues from Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin 2 (Rome’s developer, Logic Artists, were supposed to make a tactics Divinity spin-off) with its reactive elemental surfaces and extremely good voice acting, but keeps things focused and snappy, with dialogues never using more than two or three lines, back-and-forth conversations, and great 2D character art that immersive you in the cruel but extremely attractive world it presents. Everyone here is hot, so why not make companions romanceable? And they do – even if the romance arcs are a little sudden and rushed.

But combat is what you’ll be doing for 80% of the game, and it’s never boring thanks to its class variety and puzzle-like encounter design. The legion encounters are a different story. Simplistic in nature, neither challenging nor rewarding, they serve as a minigame in between main stories. But the fact that you have to grind them out to get resources or simply progress is what end up making them tedious.

Overall, Expeditions: Rome offers a great tightly packed story with memorable characters and dialogue, plenty of meaningful choices, and a surprisingly engaging tactical combat. The legion battles and conquest progression overstay their welcome, but never managed to bring down my enjoyment.

History of the game is very interesting and it reflects this well, but I couldn't finish it even though I started from the beginning twice. The gameplay is too repetitive. This gets incredibly boring towards the last chapters. Doing the same things over and over again from the beginning to the end feels very painful and causes you to break away from the story. Not a bad game but not a good game. It gets incredibly unbalanced in difficulty most of the time. They definitely needed to keep this game shorter and deepened the main story as well. The way they chose to prolong the gameplay ruined the game. I'm probably done with this game for good. I tried my best to love it and finish it, but the game doesn't want that to happen.